Yellowknife (July 02/04) - What sounded like nothing more than children playing by the water quickly turned into an emergency situation Monday evening when a houseboating couple paddled over to have a closer look.

What they saw were a pair of teens sitting atop their overturned canoe, and an other clinging desperately to a sailboat's mooring line on Yellowknife Bay.

"He was saying he couldn't hold on any longer," said Paul Falvo, who lives in a houseboat on Yellowknife Bay with his partner Krista Domchek.

"Of course, there wasn't a lifejacket in sight. They were probably, in my opinion, too far from shore to swim."

Their canoe already filled with gear, Falvo and Domchek wondered if it was possible to safely get the panicky teens aboard without tipping over themselves.

Falvo, a Coast Guard auxiliary member, fortunately had his marine radio with him. He radioed the Coast Guard's head office in Inuvik for help. "I'm probably the only wingnut that takes a marine radio into a canoe on a calm night, but I'll be more and more keeping it with me," said Falvo.

Overheard call

The thing about marine radios is that because they run on an open frequency, everyone else who happens to be listening could hear the call, too.

Todd Burlingame, who lives in a house next door to Old Town's Government Dock, heard the distress call and headed out on his zodiac inflatable boat.

He arrived just as the couple were loading the one youth stranded on the mooring line into their canoe. He took the other two into his boat, tied a line to the couple's canoe and towed them back to shore.

The Coast Guard summoned an ambulance, but the boys left for home before it arrived.

Burlingame said he has come to the rescue of about a dozen people on the lake over the years.

"It was a very close call," said Burlingame.

"One of them was borderline going into shock. It would've been critical in another 10 minutes, there was no doubt about that."

Yellowknife Fire Department deputy chief, Clem St. Croix, said there is still plenty of ice on Great Slave Lake. He said a person probably wouldn't last longer than 30 minutes in the water. "If you run into risk of falling into the water or tipping over a boat, make sure you have a lifejacket on," said St. Croix.

"That's the easiest safety precaution to take."